Orange County CCCS

[pepsima1]

I was doing a search through the 800 mhz spectrun and hit on 868.3125 and this frequency is saying that this is Carbon Canyon site data control channel and this is the first time I was able to get a good 99 percent decode rate and the system says its 45C R001 S015. My scanner is also saying that decoding a P25 system.

Do anybody have any in-site what this frequency is doing. I setup a trunking site and used a wildcard to see if I could get any talkgroup hits and was not able to get any

Interesting ???????????

 

[Markb]

Not sure what 45C signifies, but you probably won't hear much on there. The only TG's that Carbon Canyon likely will carry are Brea GREEN, RED, and 2-A/2-B. Maybe 2-E now that Metronet is dispatching Brea FD.
Also, in order to hear traffic on this site, a unit must be affiliated to one of the above TG's , like a "real" SmartZone system. It has a really small footprint and the odds are slim that a radio would prefer it over the Countywide cell. Seems like about a 1 mile stretch of Carbon Canyon Road in my observation.
I haven't monitored that site all that much, but I have yet to hear anything on it when I did.

Mark

 

[pepsima1]

I did some researching and I was able to download PRO96 Com P25 decoding software and I was able to decode and its a full P25 control data channel.

The main control channel that is in the DB is 868.3125 and it is in Carbon Canyon and the other two channels that are showing up are 868.7125 and 866.7125 which say they belong to Crystal Cove.

Whats interesting is that this system is a full P25 system. I get a solid 99 percent decode from S. Orange County.

If anybody has any information that they can share that would be great.

System ID 45C
Site ID 115 (T010F)
WACN BEE00

 

[Markb]

Strange. Does that site show any neighbors? The Carbon Canyon site shouldn't be receiveable unless you are in Brea Olinda. I usually lose the signal by the time I hit Carbon Canyon Reg Park, if not sooner. Are you sure it's the Carbon Canyon IR and not something else?

 

[pepsima1]

Yes I should not be-able to hear this freq in S Orange County at all. But the RR database shows that this frequency is registered to either Orange County or Riverside County but this frequency is has a control channel and the data is being transmitted in a P25 digital format. Also I am getting a 99 percent decode rate and its a strong signal too. Wondering if Orange County is in testing mode with their system???????

 

[MtnBiker2005]

Notice you got the " i " on the 866.7125 freq.
Did it show a FCC license on Pro96Com software ?


P.S fyi... You can turn on the other tabs on the bottom of the software. ( Edit>Screen Settings>.... )
Like the screenshot on the Pro96com page.
http://www.psredit.com/pro96com/

 

[pepsima1]

I could not find any FCC lincense on the software but I was able to find a call sign. WNSS313

This is all I can find at this point. This site is a mystery......

 

[K6CDO]

WNSS313 is Orange County's temporary location license. It well may be a test P25 setup.

 

[Markb]

Sounds like that's the only reasonable explanation. Now I'm curious. I get nothing here in North OC on the control channel freq, so it's probably safe to say that it's not a high- level site.

 

[ocscanr]

I noticed all of those frequencies are all in the Crystal Cove cell. Perhaps they took it down for maintenance or they were in fact testing for a better cell location. I don't understand what you meant by it is in Full P25? Did you mean there were no analog communications that you heard or all affiliated TG's were P25 and none were analog? I've only seen a mix on the OC CCCS. Interesting find though! =)

 

[pepsima1]

I think they are testing for a new cell location. What I meant by a full P25 is that I could not use Trunk88 to decode anyting on that control channel. I had to use another program that is a P25 decode software to the control channel which I was able to decode. So they were transmitting data on a digital P25 format. There was also no communication either analog or digital but there was a digital channel broadcasting data on the control channel. It is a very interesting find.

Maybe there are some upgrades coming down the pipes and I was the first one to sniff something over the airwaves that the county doesn't want anybody to know yet. Very early phases hopefully

 

[Mike_G_D]

I wouldn't get too mysterious about it - it just sounds like Orange County has a temporary/experimental P25 site up for testing as K6CDO indicated. No biggie but still interesting for us hobbyists.

oscscnr - a full P25 site is part of a P25 trunking system complying with the P25 standard (Phase 1 and Phase 2) which is the standard that will continue to be built out in the foreseeable future; such systems are fully P25 digital, either Phase 1 FDMA or Phase 2 TDMA and contain no analog talk groups. A Motorola 3600 baud site is proprietary Motorola technology which can have both analog and digital P25 CAI (Common Air Interface) talk groups - these type of systems are considered older technology and are slowly being phased out in favor of full P25 compliant systems (or some other form of newer digital trunking technology) however it is likely that they will still be around for some time yet. Most likely, Orange County, like the other surrounding counties in the area, is testing out upgrade paths to full P25 systems so it is not really surprising that they may have a pilot system in place for test purposes.

As I said, though, it is still an interesting find. I tried but cannot receive the signal down here in North San Diego County, for what it's worth.

-Mike

 

[MtnBiker2005]

{See other thread for more newer system notes}
http://forums.radioreference.com/gr...998-big-find-tonight-southern-california.html

 

[inigo88]

This is the start of the CCCS "SmartX" upgrade. Motorola eventually wants to drop support for ASTRO 4.1 Type II systems and force everyone to upgrade to P25. Since that's obviously not a very financially realistic option for most of their clients, they created SmartX as an incentive to upgrade by allowing the process to be more gradual. SmartX acts as a switch at the site level, converting the signalling data back and forth between P25 ODP/IDP format and Type II OSW/ISW format. This allows system admins to upgrade their core network infrastructure (like the aging zone controller and CEB stuff) without having to simultaneously upgrade potentially dozens of sites or purchase thousands of new radios. From what I understand, the SmartX switch acts as an intermediary between the Zone Controller in the upgraded system core (P25 7.X) and the Site Controller at a Smartzone site (ASTRO 4.1). In this situation, the Zone Controller is sending messages in the ODP/IDP format at 9600 bps, and the Site Controller is expecting them in OSW/ISW format at 3600 bps, hence the need for a conversion.

TL;DR: The old SmartZone CCCS SmartZone system and the new P25 system are actually one in the same. The P25 site is not an "experiment" but rather the first step in what will eventually be a full conversion from SmartZone to P25. The CCCS Zone Controller is already upgraded to P25, and they're using SmartX to allow it to continue controlling the older sites. Gradually the old radios will be reprogrammed or phased out, and the sites will change from SmartZone to P25. I have no idea what the timeline would be on something like that, but that's the overall purpose of SmartX and this new P25 site on the system.

jlanfn astutely pointed out in the other thread that the talkgroup IDs on the new system are the old IDs divided by 16. As he said, this is because the decimal Motorola Type II IDs we're so used to with our scanners include the status bit, but in actuality the ASTRO 4.1 IDs don't. Since P25 has no status bit, we are seeing the true ASTRO talkgroup IDs the zone controller was sending out all along. Thus the talkgroups on both the old system and the new system are the same.

 

[pepsima1]

Wow!!!! What a great article inigo88. I always like to hear the technically aspect on what is going on with the backend infustructure. This SmartX upgrade makes sense since The County of Orange is getting more money cut from governer Brown this year in California.

I always wondered why when I was using Trunk88 to decode the CC that the talkgroups were different from the scanner to what it was recordingon the trunking decoder. Now I can understand that the real talkgroups were correct on the decoder side.

So what I have done over the past six months is that I have been running Trunk88 on Countwide,South,North,Southwest, and Northwest cells and collected all of the talkroups for each cell.

So I have submitted all of the Countwide cell talkgroups to RR and they should reflect on the new P25 site.

I am going to submit all of the South Cell talkgroups within the next weeks and so forth all the way down to the North Cell, Northwest and Southwest Cells. The rest of the other cells dont carry any talkgroups much and are not dedicated to any of them I think. Plus the Crystal Cove Cell frequencies are now being used and tested for the P25 system.

 

[scottyhetzel]

Awesome info. Gentlemen... So for us beginners on trunk theory...OrCo will need to be monitored in the future by a digital scanner ? Can you give us a best guess when the whole system will be all digital.

 

[pepsima1]

Yes ORCO will need to be heard with a digital scanner but that won't be for about maybe 2 years, but who knows. Only the radio techs that work for the county would be-able to help with that information.

 

[bigmattyl]

i really hope they dont decide to encrypt the whole thing.. that would be just.. depressing